by Tom Vanden Brook, USA TODAY

by Tom Vanden Brook, USA TODAY

The Air Force has an arsenal of weapons that could neutralize Syria's suspected chemical weapons and also stop, but not destroy, its power-generation systems.

Last week, USA TODAY reported on the two prime candidates - the CrashPAD and the Passive Attack Weapon (PAW) - both of which are stocked in the Air Force inventory. Here's a bit more about each, and a third arrow in the air-attack quiver - the Power Distribution Denial Munition - that works by disrupting power supplies, not destroying them.

Suspicions that Iraq's Saddam Hussein had stockpiled chemical weapons prompted the Pentagon to pursue a crash program to build boutique bombs to blow them up. Those suspicions, of course, turned out to be false; Saddam didn't have weapons of mass destruction. But that didn't stop military planners from continuing to develop countermeasures, spending millions on research and development.

Now, Air Force documents show they are in the arsenal and do the following:

â?¢ The Passive Attack Weapon, or PAW, does its damage not by exploding but by puncturing chemical weapons tanks with a hail of penetrating rods. The bomb contains 362 rods, more than a foot in length; 1,004 rods about six inches long; and 2,406 that are three inches or shorter. It would work by allowing the chemicals to leak and dissipate before they were mixed into a lethal brew.

It can be dropped by warplanes such as the F-15, F-16 and the B-52.

â?¢ CrashPAD (Prompt Agent Defeat) has loftier ambitions than its cousin, the PAW. The 2,000-pound warhead contains high explosives and blast fragments to rupture containers of toxic chemicals. The follow-on explosion with 420-pounds of white phosphorus vaporizes the toxins. It takes its first name from the "crash program" that created it.

"The bomb body is loaded with explosives to provide fragmentation and white phosphorous to provide dispersion and create an intense fire when the bomb explodes to neutralize the aerosolized agent," the document says.

The risk with both bombs, as military analysts have pointed out, is that they require exquisitely precise targeting and drawing-board execution to work. Miss by a bit or fail to destroy the toxins released and you've caused the exact problem you sought to prevent.

â?¢ Power Distribution Denial Munition (PDDM). This ingenious weapon isn't aimed at chemical weapons but at an adversary's power grid. It contains 202 bomblets that each contain 114 "fiber balls." The stringy fibers can be dropped on power lines or at electricity substations to disrupt power. They don't destroy the grid but fall on power lines and must be removed by hand before generation can resume.

The weapon, or one like it, helped tip the 1999 air war in Kosovo in NATO's favor. The bombs disrupted electricity in Serbia in May 1999, and about a month later, the Serbians relented.